Mobile devices such as cellular telephones, smart phones, GPS systems and cellular-enabled personal computers have become very common and very powerful. This combination of ubiquity and capability has created an ongoing demand for improved devices and unique applications, all of which means that a user will be spending even more time on his or her mobile device.
A typical mobile device operates as part of a communication network provided by a mobile telephone carrier. Such communication networks provide a host of basic services such as time keeping and access to the public telephone network. In addition to basic communications, a state-of-the-art mobile device, often referred to as a smartphone, will have many built in features such as communication ports, touch screen displays, keyboards, orientation sensors, accelerometers, cameras, one or more timers, microphones, audio outputs, memory card readers, significant internal memory, and specialized software. Such mobile devices can provide a wide range of functionality such as telephone communications, text messaging, calendars, alarms, memo and note recording, GPS navigation, music (MP3) and video (MP4) playback, video calling, conference calling, movie playback, picture taking and sending, games, e-mail, audio and video downloading, internet access and browsing, short range communications such as Bluetooth™, mobile banking, instant messaging and the ever-popular specialized ringtones.
Despite the wide range of capabilities of mobile devices in general, all uses can be grouped for convenience into 4 main categories: calling, text messaging, data transferring and internal applications. Of those categories calling, text messaging, and data transferring involve a mobile device user accessing the communication network (with the understanding that local data transferring such as via Blue-Tooth is an application not necessarily requiring connection to a network).
Accessing a mobile device's communication network is significant because the cost of the accessed service has to be paid. Calling, text messaging, and data transferring all run up time charges and on most communication networks the cost of each service is different. Mobile device communication networks may bill based on the total amount of time a category is used (phone call), the number of times a category is used (text messaging) or the amount of data that has been transferred (data transferring). As many mobile device users can attest such charges can add up quickly.
Many companies allow employees to bring and use their own mobile devices to work. Those mobile devices are often used for both personal and business related activities. This creates the problem of who pays for mobile device usage. Many employees and many companies do not want the employee to subsidize an employer's business by having the employee pay for the company's communications. Likewise many companies do not want to pay for their employees' personal mobile device usage. Even in the case where flat rate billing is applied without regard to a users use, it may still be desirable to an employer or employee to allocate the flat rate depending on whether device use is personal or business related.